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With the majority of esports leagues wrapping up for the year, this week’s Top 10 Channels was largely dominated by individual streamers.
Tyler “Tyler1” Steinkamp led the week off the back of several lengthy streams at the end of the League of Legends ranked season.
Developer Grinding Gear Games hosted its Path of Exile convention, ExileCon, which broadcast new announcements, competitions, and celebrity streams throughout the weekend.
While many major leagues have concluded, Valve’s open tournament ecosystems allow the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2 trains to keep on rolling through the winter.
The following content is ranked according to the total number of hours watched on Twitch from Monday to the following Sunday, with data compiled using TEO Access.
Go Big or Go Home
Steinkamp has operated been the most consistently strong non-esports League of Legends channel on Twitch in 2019, appearing in the Top 10 numerous times. This week the streamer shot to the top of the chart thanks to several marathon streaming days, accruing 84.10 hours of total air time during the week. His 1.88M hours watched accounted for 1.03% of viewership across the entire platform.
Former Overwatch pro Félix “xQc” Lengyel took a similar tactic, accumulating over 74 hours of air time to reach 1.78M hours watched, though Lengyel streamed a variety of games including the newly-released Pokémon Sword/Shield.
Living in Exile
Last weekend, Auckland, New Zealand, played host to ExileCon, a two-day convention dedicated to Path of Exile. The BlizzCon-esque convention featured new announcements from the developers, a variety of panels, competitive events, and live broadcasts from popular streamers live from the convention floor.
Over the course of the event, the “pathofexile” Twitch channel generated 1.41M hours watched. Path of Exile is a game rarely brought up in esports circles, but a growing racing scene within the game, combined with its sizeable, dedicated playerbase, make it a title that could become relevant to the industry at a moment’s notice.
ESL Pro League/MDL Chengdu Major
Valve’s esports offerings, CS:GO and Dota 2 were in the midst of their own competitions last week – the ESL Pro League and MDL Chengdu Major, respectively. While neither event has reached its final stage, both posted respectable viewership, with the Dota 2 tournament’s Russian language broadcast once again outperforming its English-language stream.
The leading Dota 2 channel generated 1.25M hours watched, while CS:GO’s Pro League reached 1.57M. The open nature of both ecosystems means that these games can effectively sustain competitions year-round as a wide array of tournament organizers jockey for position within the space, or operate one of Valve’s officially-supported events.
